The 1998 sci-fi
film 'Deep Impact' tells the story of a comet on target to hit Earth and a crew
of astronauts sent to destroy the comet with nuclear weapons.
After several failed attempts to carry out the mission as planned, and an enormous chunk of the comet now guaranteed
to crash into the Earth, the captain of the mission hatches a last-ditch plan: a
suicide mission, deliberately piloting their craft into the comet and detonating
their remaining nuclear weapons.
After a
long, sombre pause, one of the crew muses, ‘well, look at the bright side: we’ll
all have high schools named after us.’
It’s true; we
tend to name our schools, universities, public buildings, parks, and landmarks
after heroes- incredible people, great achievers, people who proved they were role
models…
We name
things after people in which we recognize greatness.
That’s
certainly what was probably on the minds of the students of Queens University in
Belfast when they voted to name their student union after Nelson Mandela.
It doesn’t seem
like that interesting a fact until you realize they did so in 1986, when
Mandela was in prison serving a life sentence for sabotage and conspiracy to
violently overthrow the government and his political party, the African National Congress, was illegal.
It would be
4 more years until Mandela was released from prison to begin negotiations with
the South African government to end the Apartheid system;
three more years before he received, along with then-South African President F.W. de Klerk, the Nobel
Peace Prize;
another year
for him to win the presidency of South Africa in a landslide;
16 years
for the US government to grant him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Queen
Elizabeth II to give him a knighthood;
and 23
years for the UN to declare 18 July ‘Mandela Day’.
Today, naming
things after Nelson Mandela is a no-brainer.
It doesn’t
take much courage to name a school after a person that conventional wisdom
holds to be a hero;
It takes
significantly more courage to name it after a person your government has
officially declared a terrorist…
Did Mandela
deserve the honour in 1986? Lots of people at the time would’ve probably said ‘no’.
With hindsight, an overwhelming majority would probably say ‘yes’.
Which begs
the question:
Who living
today- declared by our government to be a terrorist, a dangerous criminal, or a
national security risk- should we be naming our schools after?
Who is our unrecognized
‘Mandela’ now?
Who
deserves our courage now?
Chelsea
Manning?
Edward
Snowden?
Shaker
Aamer (Google him…)?
Adel Noori
(Google him…)?
Veronza
Bowers Jr. (Google him…)?
Jeremy
Hammond (Google him…)?
Eric
McDavid (Google him…)?
I honestly
don’t know…
I make no
claims for or against these people deserving such an honour.
But America
locks up a greater proportion of its population than any other nation on Earth, and its 'terror watch list' includes over a million people;
There’s got
to be a few in there who deserve a school name...
The
question remains:
Who has the
courage to even bring it up?
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